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Sgt. Cortez wrote:
People must be playing a different 9th edition than I do. Movement still matters:
Do I spread out to prevent deepstriking?
Do I move close for melta(or rapid fire) and risk being charged?
Do I move through terrain and get slowed down, but get cover?
Do I place the unit right on the first or second level, risking not having a good shot when my opponent moves out of los? Do I place my vehicle behind terrain and then have to move around for two turns?
Do I place my army at the deployment line (and have more shots in the first turn) or in the back (and prevent charges)?
How do I maximize attacks in CC, measuring half-inches?
How do I place units to not lose them to morale after casualties?
Do I use transports at all?
Where the hell do I place my characters properly to allow:
a) use of auras
b) charging with the characters
c) protecting the chars in case of a bad charge roll
d) use psychic powers how I want
e) charging enemy characters
f) hit the most units with exploding strats like bombardment or Nurgle's rot

I admit there are two problems in 9th which solve too many of these questions: FLY and movement values being too high. Both have nothing to do with blast, since blasts in the past where too unreliable to really be a consideration. But I think most movement values could be reduced by 2-4 inches. I haven't really used rhinos since 8th, since my Plague Marines can easily just walk across the board now and reach CC in 2nd or 3rd turn.

.
This. I didn't say positioning didn't matter earlier, but the fiddly elements of it aren't as bad as they were. In my last couple games the movement phase was more about making sure I was out of LOS, in aura bubbles, in range of terrain, etc, rather than all of the above plus spacing out 2" to avoid getting screwed by my friend's Basilisks and Leman Russ tanks. I also like the 1" engagement range for similar reasons, less fiddly.

I think blast weapons being more effective at tank hunting than killing hordes of infantry is a perfect example of why I don't like this edition

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 auticus wrote:
"how can we emulate a game like magic the gathering along with its massive success and put it in tabletop form"

It's simply not possible due to the inherent contradiction of disposable cards taking virtually zero time or space per dollar spent vs. ever-embiggened models taking increasingly more time and space per dollar spent.

Unless you make the models evergreen but the datasheets disposable. I can see it now, buy a pack of Codex Cards. Did you find Alaric's Reave-wardens, the best Intercessor squad for Blood Angels? No, you just got Assault Intercessors. Aw well! Better save up to buy Alaric's Reave-wardens from the card shop, or just keep buying packs 'til you get it. It's only Mythic rarity, afterall.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
People must be playing a different 9th edition than I do. Movement still matters:
Do I spread out to prevent deepstriking?
Do I move close for melta(or rapid fire) and risk being charged?
Do I move through terrain and get slowed down, but get cover?
Do I place the unit right on the first or second level, risking not having a good shot when my opponent moves out of los? Do I place my vehicle behind terrain and then have to move around for two turns?
Do I place my army at the deployment line (and have more shots in the first turn) or in the back (and prevent charges)?
How do I maximize attacks in CC, measuring half-inches?
How do I place units to not lose them to morale after casualties?
Do I use transports at all?
Where the hell do I place my characters properly to allow:
a) use of auras
b) charging with the characters
c) protecting the chars in case of a bad charge roll
d) use psychic powers how I want
e) charging enemy characters
f) hit the most units with exploding strats like bombardment or Nurgle's rot

I admit there are two problems in 9th which solve too many of these questions: FLY and movement values being too high. Both have nothing to do with blast, since blasts in the past where too unreliable to really be a consideration. But I think most movement values could be reduced by 2-4 inches. I haven't really used rhinos since 8th, since my Plague Marines can easily just walk across the board now and reach CC in 2nd or 3rd turn.

You are absolutely right. The only thing that changed is that model positioning doesn't matter anymore for getting shot, unit positioning matters as much as it ever did.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The biggest things in the templates vs non-templates to me is:
1) on table positioning no longer matters. Spreading out to 2" for horde units in my 4th edition and HH games has serious positioning consequences (pretty much all drawbacks/disadvantages) on the table. It's hardly "automatic." I will ruthlessly exploit the numerous tactical drawbacks of spreading out if someone does so against me thoughtlessly. In 9th? Whatever, everyone in single file or in a massive clump, doesn't matter.
2) the administrative division of the enemy force affects how effective my explosive shells are:
"Sir, 30 men standing shoulder to shoulder in the open on the objective!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"BUT SIR! Intel suggests they are in 6 units of five; the mortars won't be effective!"
"...."

This has an easy fix:

"Each unit within X" of the target unit suffers Y hits from this weapon." Where X and Y can be basically anything, you can go fixed distances or variable distances for X, Y can be fixed value, variable, identical to the base profile of the weapon, or variably higher/lower than the base profile, creating design space for blast weapons that are able to impact a wider area of the board than others, etc.

That just sounds like a Blast Template but with extra steps.

 vipoid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The biggest things in the templates vs non-templates to me is:
1) on table positioning no longer matters. Spreading out to 2" for horde units in my 4th edition and HH games has serious positioning consequences (pretty much all drawbacks/disadvantages) on the table. It's hardly "automatic." I will ruthlessly exploit the numerous tactical drawbacks of spreading out if someone does so against me thoughtlessly. In 9th? Whatever, everyone in single file or in a massive clump, doesn't matter.
2) the administrative division of the enemy force affects how effective my explosive shells are:
"Sir, 30 men standing shoulder to shoulder in the open on the objective!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"BUT SIR! Intel suggests they are in 6 units of five; the mortars won't be effective!"
"...."

This has an easy fix:

"Each unit within X" of the target unit suffers Y hits from this weapon." Where X and Y can be basically anything, you can go fixed distances or variable distances for X, Y can be fixed value, variable, identical to the base profile of the weapon, or variably higher/lower than the base profile, creating design space for blast weapons that are able to impact a wider area of the board than others, etc.

That just sounds like a Blast Template but with extra steps.

Not only that but if you have say, a maximum spread 30-model squad your blast can hit an absolutely enormous amount of table space, but if they hit a 5 man, clumped up squad it its a tiny little area. Same gun is either a nuclear blast or a tiny pop.

Rihgu wrote:


Same gun is either a nuclear blast or a tiny pop.

That's basically what we have right now. When I shoot my plasma at a tank, sometimes it's a tiny pop (1 shot) and sometimes it's a small thermo-nuclear device (6 shots).

Toofast wrote:

Rihgu wrote:


Same gun is either a nuclear blast or a tiny pop.

That's basically what we have right now. When I shoot my plasma at a tank, sometimes it's a tiny pop (1 shot) and sometimes it's a small thermo-nuclear device (6 shots).

You mean sometimes the blast glances the tank and sometimes it hits it directly? Interesting!

Rihgu wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The biggest things in the templates vs non-templates to me is:
1) on table positioning no longer matters. Spreading out to 2" for horde units in my 4th edition and HH games has serious positioning consequences (pretty much all drawbacks/disadvantages) on the table. It's hardly "automatic." I will ruthlessly exploit the numerous tactical drawbacks of spreading out if someone does so against me thoughtlessly. In 9th? Whatever, everyone in single file or in a massive clump, doesn't matter.
2) the administrative division of the enemy force affects how effective my explosive shells are:
"Sir, 30 men standing shoulder to shoulder in the open on the objective!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"BUT SIR! Intel suggests they are in 6 units of five; the mortars won't be effective!"
"...."

This has an easy fix:

"Each unit within X" of the target unit suffers Y hits from this weapon." Where X and Y can be basically anything, you can go fixed distances or variable distances for X, Y can be fixed value, variable, identical to the base profile of the weapon, or variably higher/lower than the base profile, creating design space for blast weapons that are able to impact a wider area of the board than others, etc.

That just sounds like a Blast Template but with extra steps.

Not only that but if you have say, a maximum spread 30-model squad your blast can hit an absolutely enormous amount of table space, but if they hit a 5 man, clumped up squad it its a tiny little area. Same gun is either a nuclear blast or a tiny pop.

1. I very rarely (almost never) see someone fielding a squad larger than 10 models, let alone 30, even most Orks and Nids players these days are taking smaller squads.

2. If you spread them out that much, thats pretty much your own problem. As it stands the rules don't really encourage you spreading out like that, so its kind of like worrying about whether or not you'll be able to play basketball after a lung transplant when you've never played basketball before in your life.

3. If you were using a blast template instead, a direct hit on a clumped up/non-spread 30 model squad of infantry could potentially hit between 25-30 models (under ideal circumstances, this isn't an exaggeration either, its geometry), but if it scatters off a maximum spread 5 man squad you might only hit 1 model, or none at all. Same gun is either a nuclear blast or a tiny pop.

4. In real life terms, a typical run-of-the-mill 155mm howitzer has a lethal radius of 50-150m and a casualty radius of 150+ meters, with a suppression/likely injury radius of 350m. Even smaller mortars and grenades can potentiall kill you from 200-300m away. In short, if the games ground scale were consistent with the miniatures scale, a realistic blast weapon could potentially hit every model on the table.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Rihgu wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The biggest things in the templates vs non-templates to me is:
1) on table positioning no longer matters. Spreading out to 2" for horde units in my 4th edition and HH games has serious positioning consequences (pretty much all drawbacks/disadvantages) on the table. It's hardly "automatic." I will ruthlessly exploit the numerous tactical drawbacks of spreading out if someone does so against me thoughtlessly. In 9th? Whatever, everyone in single file or in a massive clump, doesn't matter.
2) the administrative division of the enemy force affects how effective my explosive shells are:
"Sir, 30 men standing shoulder to shoulder in the open on the objective!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"BUT SIR! Intel suggests they are in 6 units of five; the mortars won't be effective!"
"...."

This has an easy fix:

"Each unit within X" of the target unit suffers Y hits from this weapon." Where X and Y can be basically anything, you can go fixed distances or variable distances for X, Y can be fixed value, variable, identical to the base profile of the weapon, or variably higher/lower than the base profile, creating design space for blast weapons that are able to impact a wider area of the board than others, etc.

That just sounds like a Blast Template but with extra steps.

Not only that but if you have say, a maximum spread 30-model squad your blast can hit an absolutely enormous amount of table space, but if they hit a 5 man, clumped up squad it its a tiny little area. Same gun is either a nuclear blast or a tiny pop.

1. I very rarely (almost never) see someone fielding a squad larger than 10 models, let alone 30, even most Orks and Nids players these days are taking smaller squads.

2. If you spread them out that much, thats pretty much your own problem. As it stands the rules don't really encourage you spreading out like that, so its kind of like worrying about whether or not you'll be able to play basketball after a lung transplant when you've never played basketball before in your life.

3. If you were using a blast template instead, a direct hit on a clumped up/non-spread 30 model squad of infantry could potentially hit between 25-30 models (under ideal circumstances, this isn't an exaggeration either, its geometry), but if it scatters off a maximum spread 5 man squad you might only hit 1 model, or none at all. Same gun is either a nuclear blast or a tiny pop.

4. In real life terms, a typical run-of-the-mill 155mm howitzer has a lethal radius of 50-150m and a casualty radius of 150+ meters, with a suppression/likely injury radius of 350m. Even smaller mortars and grenades can potentiall kill you from 200-300m away. In short, if the games ground scale were consistent with the miniatures scale, a realistic blast weapon could potentially hit every model on the table.

1. Okay.

2. Okay.

3. You mean the blast weapon would either glance the squad or score a direct hit? That's very different from either hitting the entire table or practically nothing because it measures range from the unit hit. What I'm saying is the effectiveness of such a weapon can range from equivalent of old small blast to suddenly being multiple apocalypse sized blast templates because 1 unit decided to spread out a little, which is FAR more immersion breaking than anything the current system does.

4. Okay.

Toofast wrote:
I think blast weapons being more effective at tank hunting than killing hordes of infantry is a perfect example of why I don't like this edition

By what metric? An LRBT battle cannon kills 5 models from an 11+ horde, 3 to 4 IS, 3 to 4 wounds to marines, does 1 to 2 wounds to a LRBT, and 3 wounds to T7.

Rihgu wrote:


3. You mean the blast weapon would either glance the squad or score a direct hit? That's very different from either hitting the entire table or practically nothing because it measures range from the unit hit. What I'm saying is the effectiveness of such a weapon can range from equivalent of old small blast to suddenly being multiple apocalypse sized blast templates because 1 unit decided to spread out a little, which is FAR more immersion breaking than anything the current system does.

Its really not immersion breaking. If the unit spreads out a little and as a result a lot of crap gets hit , then your "immersion" is that it was a really effective shot that happened to have a wider than average probabilistic lethality/casualty radius. I consider this to be less immersion breaking than the alternative, which is that a model standing wholly in the open 1mm removed from the edge of a blast template is magically wholly and completely unaffected by a large explosion in close proximity - especially if the model in question is of a different unit than those actually hit by a blast template. My proposed methodology, at least, provides an abstract realism representative of the fact that these weapons can have much broader and less predictable effects than what templates allow for. And as I stated previously, its not like each unit with x" of the target would be suffering the full effects of the weapon themselves, rather the expectation would be that if the target unit takes d6 hits, then other units with 3" would suffer d3, or potentially even less than that. And if it just so happens that the target unit only takes 1 hit, but an adjacent unit takes 3 - guess what, you've just adequately abstracted the idea of "scatter" whereby the round landed off center and had a greater impact on the adjacent unit than the target unit.

If you were really so concerned about this scenario - which I don't believe you are, because it seems like you're more trying to find a justification for a return to templates rather than a good faith debate on the positives and negatives of non-template based systems - there are easy ways to resolve it. You can include a clause that at least half the models in the adjacent unit need to be within whatever distance of the target unit in order for that unit to be hit, or a clause that says they cannot take more than half as many hits (rounding down) as the target unit in order to limit the impact, or borrow a page from warmachine and say that the blast is reduced to half strength for units other than the target unit, or that only the closest unit within x" of the target unit is impacted (thereby completely neutering your argument entirely, because your hypothetical nigh-nonexistant 30 man unit of infantry maximally spread out across the table can only transfer the hit to one other unit max, thus representing the shot drifting off target and landing in a position to hit the target unit and the other unit in its area of effect, which was not an uncommon occurrence with the old blast templates), etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Toofast wrote:
I think blast weapons being more effective at tank hunting than killing hordes of infantry is a perfect example of why I don't like this edition

By what metric? An LRBT battle cannon kills 5 models from an 11+ horde, 3 to 4 IS, 3 to 4 wounds to marines, does 1 to 2 wounds to a LRBT, and 3 wounds to T7.

I think Toofast might have got the idea from me by misinterpreting part of my post:

Biggest problem with the change though was that weapon effectiveness became multiplicative. I.E. whereas before the blast template could only hit the tank once, now the d6 hit system allows that blast weapon to potentiall hit that vehicle 6 times, each of which will do x damage (which is itself potentiall randomized, giving a huge possible spread of damage output). This kind of renders the old "blast" weapons to being disproportionately more effective at attacking vehicles/monsters than infantry and the softer targets they were intended for.

I.E. its not that blast weapons became more effective anti-tank weapons than anti-infantry weapons, rather the change turned weapons mainly meant to deal with horde/large units of soft targets into also being a potentially effective means of dealing with vehicles, monsters, and solitary targets. This is especially true with smaller squads and characters, whereas before if you targeted something like a unit of two obliterators with a blast template, at most you could only hit them twice - now you can potentially hit them 6 times which kind of makes them disproportionately more effective against smaller squads and characters than larger ones.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Rihgu wrote:


3. You mean the blast weapon would either glance the squad or score a direct hit? That's very different from either hitting the entire table or practically nothing because it measures range from the unit hit. What I'm saying is the effectiveness of such a weapon can range from equivalent of old small blast to suddenly being multiple apocalypse sized blast templates because 1 unit decided to spread out a little, which is FAR more immersion breaking than anything the current system does.

Its really not immersion breaking. If the unit spreads out a little and as a result a lot of crap gets hit , then your "immersion" is that it was a really effective shot that happened to have a wider than average probabilistic lethality/casualty radius. I consider this to be less immersion breaking than the alternative, which is that a model standing wholly in the open 1mm removed from the edge of a blast template is magically wholly and completely unaffected by a large explosion in close proximity - especially if the model in question is of a different unit than those actually hit by a blast template. My proposed methodology, at least, provides an abstract realism representative of the fact that these weapons can have much broader and less predictable effects than what templates allow for. And as I stated previously, its not like each unit with x" of the target would be suffering the full effects of the weapon themselves, rather the expectation would be that if the target unit takes d6 hits, then other units with 3" would suffer d3, or potentially even less than that. And if it just so happens that the target unit only takes 1 hit, but an adjacent unit takes 3 - guess what, you've just adequately abstracted the idea of "scatter" whereby the round landed off center and had a greater impact on the adjacent unit than the target unit.

If you were really so concerned about this scenario - which I don't believe you are, because it seems like you're more trying to find a justification for a return to templates rather than a good faith debate on the positives and negatives of non-template based systems - there are easy ways to resolve it. You can include a clause that at least half the models in the adjacent unit need to be within whatever distance of the target unit in order for that unit to be hit, or a clause that says they cannot take more than half as many hits (rounding down) as the target unit in order to limit the impact, or borrow a page from warmachine and say that the blast is reduced to half strength for units other than the target unit, or that only the closest unit within x" of the target unit is impacted (thereby completely neutering your argument entirely, because your hypothetical nigh-nonexistant 30 man unit of infantry maximally spread out across the table can only transfer the hit to one other unit max, thus representing the shot drifting off target and landing in a position to hit the target unit and the other unit in its area of effect, which was not an uncommon occurrence with the old blast templates), etc.

A few notes - I do not like templates and I would not like a return to templates. I am certainly not trying to justify a return to them.

Second, to make a mechanic like you proposed work, it would require a bunch of clunky additional rules. You could say, base the "blast" distance off of the initial model removed by the player, but then you'd probably also need to add rules that consecutive models removed from the same unit would have to be from within the blast radius (at least until you run out of models to remove from there).

Third, as a person who plays Black Legion against opponents who like deep strike, my lists often have 30 man units of cultists spread out to stop DW vets/Tempestus Scions from mowing down my backlines. The fact that you don't come across these types of units often is POOR justification to write rules that do not account for them and cause problems when they DO exist.

Ah, so you're trying to preserve your existing playstyle rather than adjusting to the new gameplay paradigm/meta that would be brought about as a result of a mechanical change. Got it.

And no, you really don't need a bunch of clunky additional rules. This is the entirety of what the rule would need to be in order to assuage your concerns, placed within the context of the "Abilities" section of the weapon profile:

"This weapon does d3 hits to the nearest unit within d6" of the target unit."

WOW. MUCH CLUNK. VERY ADDITIONAL.

Thats less "additional rules" than a very large number of weapons already in the game, and dramatically less text than the current "Blast" special rule which needs to be entirely rewritten because of how it broke the game.

Well, if only that was the proposed rule I had any dispute with.

"Each unit within X" of the target unit suffers Y hits from this weapon."

This is the one I'm talking about.

If we do the one you JUST proposed... well it doesn't solve the initial problem of

2) the administrative division of the enemy force affects how effective my explosive shells are:
"Sir, 30 men standing shoulder to shoulder in the open on the objective!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"BUT SIR! Intel suggests they are in 6 units of five; the mortars won't be effective!"
"...."

The mortars will be slightly more effective, but still be heavily impacted by the administrative division of the enemy forces...

Rihgu wrote:
Well, if only that was the proposed rule I had any dispute with.

"Each unit within X" of the target unit suffers Y hits from this weapon."

This is the one I'm talking about.
If we do the one you JUST proposed... well it doesn't solve the initial problem of

2) the administrative division of the enemy force affects how effective my explosive shells are:
"Sir, 30 men standing shoulder to shoulder in the open on the objective!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"BUT SIR! Intel suggests they are in 6 units of five; the mortars won't be effective!"
"...."

The mortars will be slightly more effective, but still be heavily impacted by the administrative division of the enemy forces...

I know you probably didn't read it, but the one I just proposed was detailed in the post prior:

If you were really so concerned about this scenario - which I don't believe you are, because it seems like you're more trying to find a justification for a return to templates rather than a good faith debate on the positives and negatives of non-template based systems - there are easy ways to resolve it. You can include a clause that at least half the models in the adjacent unit need to be within whatever distance of the target unit in order for that unit to be hit, or a clause that says they cannot take more than half as many hits (rounding down) as the target unit in order to limit the impact, or borrow a page from warmachine and say that the blast is reduced to half strength for units other than the target unit, or that only the closest unit within x" of the target unit is impacted (thereby completely neutering your argument entirely, because your hypothetical nigh-nonexistant 30 man unit of infantry maximally spread out across the table can only transfer the hit to one other unit max, thus representing the shot drifting off target and landing in a position to hit the target unit and the other unit in its area of effect, which was not an uncommon occurrence with the old blast templates), etc.

And I fail to see how it *doesn't* address the problem in the scenario in question. Whereas before your mortar might only hit 1 guy in 1 unit up to a max of 6 hits on 1 unit, my solution ensures you can at least hit 1 guy in each of 2 units, up to a max of 6 guys in the target unit and 3 guys in the other. Which is more than adequate, because realistically a mortar dropping onto a row of men standing in a line isn't going to be as effective as if it dropped into crowd in a more dispersed formation - mortars and other explosive weapons kill in a roughly circular/elliptical area of effect, if your target is arrayed out in a line, then the vast majority of the blast, concussive force, shrapnel, etc. is essentially being directed away from the line of men towards what is essentially empty air where there is nothing to hit. Depending on how far off target the round scatters relative to the placement of the units within the target area, your mortar only inflicting casualties upon one of the 6 squads is actually entirely plausible and possible in terms of reality- thankfully the rules already allow you to split fire with a squad of mortars in order to circumvent this and ensure a damage spread across the group if this is really so concerning to you.


Also, theres no reason to restrict all weapons to having the same "blast pattern", you can have it so that the other unit(s) can take d3+1 hits, or d3+3 hits, or d6 hits, or automatic 6 hits or whatever it is you make the proportional capabilities of each weapon. You can even make it d3-1 hits or d6-2 hits or whatever to ensure the possibility that an adjacent unit isn't always going to automatically take harm form the weapon. Hell, theres really no reason (other than potential balance) why larger and heavier weapons like an Eartshaker/Basilisk can't have something to the effect of:

"This weapon does d6-1 hits to the d3 closest units within 6" of the target unit."

There. Assuming the target unit takes d6 hits, now your 30 dudes standing should-to-shoulder in 6 units of 5 men each might potentially suffer anywhere from 1 to 21 hits across 1-4 of the 6 units. Sounds like it more than adequately solves the problem with the scenario you presented to me.

chaos0xomega wrote:
There. Assuming the target unit takes d6 hits, now your 30 dudes standing should-to-shoulder in 6 units of 5 men each might potentially suffer anywhere from 1 to 21 hits across 1-4 of the 6 units.

How many hits does a single unit of 30 take under your proposed rules?

 catbarf wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
There. Assuming the target unit takes d6 hits, now your 30 dudes standing should-to-shoulder in 6 units of 5 men each might potentially suffer anywhere from 1 to 21 hits across 1-4 of the 6 units.

How many hits does a single unit of 30 take under your proposed rules?

Yeah in that case it would be the opposite:

"Sir, 30 men blobbed together on an Objective, shoulder to shoulder!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"But sir! Intel suggests they are in one unit of thirty rather than six units of five! Our mortars will be less effective!"

Losing 4d6-4 (or whatever) free hits simply because of the administrative division of the enemy force is hilarious though.

Rihgu wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 auticus wrote:
"how can we emulate a game like magic the gathering along with its massive success and put it in tabletop form"

It's simply not possible due to the inherent contradiction of disposable cards taking virtually zero time or space per dollar spent vs. ever-embiggened models taking increasingly more time and space per dollar spent.

Unless you make the models evergreen but the datasheets disposable. I can see it now, buy a pack of Codex Cards. Did you find Alaric's Reave-wardens, the best Intercessor squad for Blood Angels? No, you just got Assault Intercessors. Aw well! Better save up to buy Alaric's Reave-wardens from the card shop, or just keep buying packs 'til you get it. It's only Mythic rarity, afterall.

Ohh.... now there's an actual business opportunity that GW could explore! LOL


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
"This weapon does d3 hits to the nearest unit within d6" of the target unit."

Boring. Not enough die rolling.

"Roll a d6 for every unit with at least 1 model within 6" of the marker point. If the result is greater or equal to the distance to the marker, that unit suffers d6 hits plus an additional d6 hits for each additional inch the result exceeds the distance to the closest model."

FUN!!!

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
There. Assuming the target unit takes d6 hits, now your 30 dudes standing should-to-shoulder in 6 units of 5 men each might potentially suffer anywhere from 1 to 21 hits across 1-4 of the 6 units.

How many hits does a single unit of 30 take under your proposed rules?

Yeah in that case it would be the opposite:

"Sir, 30 men blobbed together on an Objective, shoulder to shoulder!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"But sir! Intel suggests they are in one unit of thirty rather than six units of five! Our mortars will be less effective!"

Losing 4d6-4 (or whatever) free hits simply because of the administrative division of the enemy force is hilarious though.

I asked because I didn't know if he had a solution in mind, but yeah, it seems to me like it's re-expressing the original problem.

I don't think the core concept of Blast is bad, just that it only being tied to a single target unit causes these weird scenarios. Maybe you could address it by:
1. Having Blast count the number of models in the target unit as well as all units within 2" of that target, and
2. Have some of the hits be allocated to those other units by some means.

That gives you full effectiveness regardless of whether it's one unit of 30 or bunched-up units of 5, and the issue raised earlier of a 30-strong unit being in range of lots of other things is less of an issue since the enemy's going to be maxing out their shots either way. There might still be some weird cases as a result of whatever hit allocation you use, but short of going back to a mechanism that determines exactly what models are getting hit (ie templates) I'm not sure that's resolvable.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
There. Assuming the target unit takes d6 hits, now your 30 dudes standing should-to-shoulder in 6 units of 5 men each might potentially suffer anywhere from 1 to 21 hits across 1-4 of the 6 units.

How many hits does a single unit of 30 take under your proposed rules?

Yeah in that case it would be the opposite:

"Sir, 30 men blobbed together on an Objective, shoulder to shoulder!"
"Ready the mortars!"
"But sir! Intel suggests they are in one unit of thirty rather than six units of five! Our mortars will be less effective!"

Losing 4d6-4 (or whatever) free hits simply because of the administrative division of the enemy force is hilarious though.

To me its a non-issue. Currently the unit of 30 takes d6 (well 6 with blast). With blast templates you'd probably only take 4-6 max, possibly less if they were "maximally spread" as someone keeps saying. Stick the existing blast rule, or a modified derivative thereof, on top to make yourself feel better about it if you want.

chaos0xomega wrote:
To me its a non-issue. Currently the unit of 30 takes d6 (well 6 with blast). With blast templates you'd probably only take 4-6 max, possibly less if they were "maximally spread" as someone keeps saying. Stick the existing blast rule, or a modified derivative thereof, on top to make yourself feel better about it if you want.

So they take an average of 3.5 (or 6, with Blast) rather than 8.5 if they were spread out in multiple units under your example?

If you're not actually fixing the problem (target administrative organization significantly impacting damage output), what's the point of your rules proposal exactly?

Chain of Command spreads hits from all weapons (not just HE shells) across all teams within 4" of the target team - this represents the inability of the opponent to accurately differentiate specific teams on the battlefield. Of course, there are exceptions (e.g. snipers), but anyways...

That would never work in 40k. As people have rightly pointed out, a 30 man unit has a massive footprint, especially on Ork 32mm bases. Hitting everything within 2" may include a huge amount of models including friendly ones, while a tiny unit of one guy won't even result in a bodyguard unit within 3" taking blast damage.

Templates are just about the only way to do this, at least that I can think of.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Chain of Command spreads hits from all weapons (not just HE shells) across all teams within 4" of the target team - this represents the inability of the opponent to accurately differentiate specific teams on the battlefield. Of course, there are exceptions (e.g. snipers), but anyways...

That would never work in 40k. As people have rightly pointed out, a 30 man unit has a massive footprint, especially on Ork 32mm bases. Hitting everything within 2" may include a huge amount of models including friendly ones, while a tiny unit of one guy won't even result in a bodyguard unit within 3" taking blast damage.

Templates are just about the only way to do this, at least that I can think of.

See my post above. I think the Blast mechanic is fine for 40K, but it would avoid these weird edge cases if it also counted models from units within 2" as part of the target unit. A unit of 30 Orks is going to be getting max shots regardless, but targeting the one guy might get Blast effects if his bodyguards are numerous enough. Then you just need a mechanic for dividing hits between the eligible units which, admittedly, I haven't put a lot of thought into.

 catbarf wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
To me its a non-issue. Currently the unit of 30 takes d6 (well 6 with blast). With blast templates you'd probably only take 4-6 max, possibly less if they were "maximally spread" as someone keeps saying. Stick the existing blast rule, or a modified derivative thereof, on top to make yourself feel better about it if you want.

So they take an average of 3.5 (or 6, with Blast) rather than 8.5 if they were spread out in multiple units under your example?

If you're not actually fixing the problem (target administrative organization significantly impacting damage output), what's the point of your rules proposal exactly?

Why is that a problem? Where is the problem? I honestly don't see the complaint, other than it being a different emergent gameplay paradigm than what currently exists today (which is kind of the point of everyones desire to change it in the first place...). Its a gameplay abstraction, just like everything else in the game. As it stands, "administrative organization" already significantly impacts damage output:

-Put two individual models in base contact with eachother and hit them with an area of effect weapon like a mortar or a flamer - what happens? Only one of them gets hit, and that one model probably dies, while the other is wholly unaffected, thereby short-changing your damage output as a result of the excess hits/damage caused by the weapon not having any other models in the target unit to affect, despite the fact that logically the other model in base contact would also be impacted by it.

Why?

"Administrative organization".

This was something everyone was complaining about just a couple pages ago. I proposed a streamlined and basic solution where administrative organization no longer prevents AOE type weapons from actually, yknow, impacting an area.

As it stands, AOE weapons function under the abstraction that - regardless of how you have actually positioned your models on the table - your unit has taken the necessary action to attempt to mitigate the impact of AOE weapons and spread out over a wider area (just as they would in reality), presumably with varying degrees of success (hence why the number of attacks is randomized). This is why a mortar will do the same d6 attacks to a 3 man unit as it will to a 30 man unit. They also evidently extend this abstraction to assume that "administrative divison" matters in the sense that individual units have also spread out over a wider area such that a mortar or howitzer firing at one unit will never catch another unit within its area of effect, again regardless of how you have actually positioned your models on the table.

This is not necessarily an unrealistic abstraction, but it is one which is evidently unsatisfying to a large number of players who would prefer a bit less abstraction in gameplay such that players are punished for crowding their forces together too tightly (as evidenced by the previously cited "30 dudes in a line in separate administrative organizations but I can only hit 5 of them at most with my one mortar" example). As the game mechanics primarily treats units, rather than individual models, as the "basis of maneuver" (so to speak), it would be inappropriate to build this system around the proximity of models *within* a unit, as doing so introduces undesirable emergent gameplay paradigms (principally, the tendency of players to space all their models within each unit out to the maximum extent possible in order to mitigate the impact of area of effect weapons, which slows gameplay to a fiddly tedium-filled crawl that ultimately provides no real value-add to either players experience).

The solution then, is a system as what I have proposed previously, which breaks the "administrative organization" barrier and allows damage to spread between units based on proximity between them. While this does create an emergent gameplay paradigm of players spreading out their units to mitigate AOE effects from jumping from one model to another, this is actually manageable because units move separately from one another and its much easier and faster to mind the gap between two units than it is between 10 (or 30) models within one unit. The fact that currently a blast weapon would do an average of 3.5 attacks and under the new system one hypothetical blast weapon might do 8.5 attacks is, essentially, a complete non-issue which is only being brought up today because its different from the existing paradigm. Rather, its the entire fething point - when someone complains about 30 dudes in 6 squads of 5 standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another not being adequately handled by the existing blast weapon rules, they are in fact complaining that under the existing rules administrative organization is causing the 30 guys to take an average of 3.5 attacks rather than an average of 8.5, or 12, or 15, or 30 attacks, etc. So yes, my proposal does, in fact, fix the problem.

Will weapon points need to be adjusted to compensate for potentially increased lethalityy? Sure, but thats also a non-issue. Will players have to play differenty? Sure, but thats also a non-issue - welcome to the world of rules updates. Does it potentially discourage players from fielding 30 man blobs, particularly those that they spread out to the maximum extent possible in order to metagame their opponents deep strike capabilities? Sure, but thats still a non-issue, it will create a new meta and players will adjust. Does it potentially discourage players from placing other units too close to a maximally spread 30 man blob? Again, rules updates, new meta, adjust. None of your arguments seem to really hold any water as valid concerns, other than that under my original proposal a 30 man blob being hit by a blast template could potentially hit every other unit on the table - but I already addressed that by suggesting a very small tweak that would limit the spread of the blast to the closest x many units within a given range, where x can be fixed to just 1 universally, or variable from weapon to weapon, etc. Which more than adequately addresses the idea of a round landing between two or three units and killing a few (or not) from each. If you want to avoid that, spread out your units. If you can't, take smaller units, if you won't, deal with it - Thems the apples.

As an aside:
[spoilers]
In the case of the previously mentioned scenario above, with a 3-man unit, the mortar operator is presumably firing at a more finite target point (because the unit covers a smaller area) than they would have the benefit of with a 30-man formation, if you rolled 1 attack the mortar drifted off target and only caught one guy, if you scored 6 then the mortar landed close enough that the 3 men in the target unit took multiple shrapnel hits. With a 30 man unit, the target point is less finite but the environment is more target rich - a poor shot will still potentiall catch one guy, but a good shot will potentially catch 6. Unfortunately, because the mechanics don't adequately take "administrative organization" into account this still only causes 6 attacks - doing away with the possibility of a really good shot that potentially catches each body within the AOE with multiple potentially lethal shrapnel hits as it would with a smaller unit.

The blast rule attempts to somewhat rectify this situation (albeit poorly) by arguing that because the 30 man unit is a more target rich environment, there is a hard minimum to the number of hits an aoe weapon will cause, i.e. the mortar (in this case) will automatically do 6 attackss to the 30 man unit, because no matter how poorly aimed the shot is, the unit is spread out over a wide enough area that it would be nigh-impossible for the mortar to not catch at least 6 dudes within the rounds blast effect. This however STILL does not allow for the possibility of a "really good hit" like it does with the 3 man unit wherein each body could potentially take multiple potentially lethal impacts from shrapnel, etc. What the rule *should* do is instead increase the number of attacks you roll for every 10 models in the unit either by adding additional dice or multiplying the result of the roll. I.E. 1-10 models you go by the weapon profile (1d6), 11-20 models you either add an additional die (so 2d6) or double the result (1d6 x2) or something to that effect, 21-30 models it goes up again (3d6 or 1d6 x3), etc. This more adequately addresses the idea of the environment being "target rich" by increasing the minimum number of attacks proportionally to the unit size, while also acknowleding the potential for a nice shot to causing excessively large amounts of harm as is consistent with the impact of blast weapons on small units. Alternatively (or perhaps in addition) they could cap the number of attacks done by these weapons to being equal to the number of models in the target unit, thus preventing a 1 man unit from suffering 6 hits from a mortar or a flamer, because again - logical consistency.

And yet I see the individuals complaining about 30 man units being disadvantaged isn't arguing for this to be changed...[/spoilers]

Chain of Command spreads hits from all weapons (not just HE shells) across all teams within 4" of the target team - this represents the inability of the opponent to accurately differentiate specific teams on the battlefield. Of course, there are exceptions (e.g. snipers), but anyways...

That would never work in 40k. As people have rightly pointed out, a 30 man unit has a massive footprint, especially on Ork 32mm bases. Hitting everything within 2" may include a huge amount of models including friendly ones, while a tiny unit of one guy won't even result in a bodyguard unit within 3" taking blast damage.

Templates are just about the only way to do this, at least that I can think of.

Again, failing to see the problem with regards to what I've proposed. As I've demonstrated previously:

-We can easily adjust the number of attacks done to adjacent units, such that they take anywhere from none (i.e. zero) to as many - or even more than - the target unit. This can be fixed, it can be variable, it can be anything you want.

-We can easily adjust the number of adjacent units impacted by the attack, such that anywhere from none (i.e. zero) to all units within given proximity are impacted. This can be fixed, it can be variable, it can be anything you want.

-We can easily adjust the proximity range at which these adjacent units are impacted, such that it will only effect units as close as 1" away to as far as... really any distance you want may or may not be impacted. This can be fixed, it can be variable, it can be anything you want.

If you know that units have a 1", 2", 3", d6" potential ring of death around them from certain weapons, would you not then play to the rules and try to spread your units out in such a manner that your 30-man blob is positioned at least 1", 2", 3", d6", etc. away from other friendly units so as to mitigate the impact of such weapons on your own forces? Tactical gameplay comes from tension, and there is certainly tension involved with deciding whether or not its worth the risk of your character getting blasted by being too close to an adjacent unit in order for that unit to benefit from the characters aura or not. With regards to bodyguard units, I wouldn't think that would be too hard to fix so that bodyguards don't become death magnets for the character they are guarding, an extra sentence in the rule that says something to the effect of "Characters within 3" may never be hit by an attack that targets this unit" should suffice.

And maybe the problem is actually 30 man units... why aren't we discussing them? As it stands only a handful of armies can take units larger than 20 models, maybe half can do units larger than 10, and in practical terms - in my experience - maybe 20% of army lists currently actually include units larger than 10 models. Seems like an awful lot of kvetching over what is essentially a minor corner case scenario that won't apply in 80% of situations.

The problem lies in the way blast effects actually work vs the way you suggest they work.

Doing hits to units NEAR the target unit is completely unrealistic when the target unit is half the board size - conversely, doing hits to ONLY the target is unrealistic when many small targets are packed together.

Administrative concerns like "how many units are in the area" and "how many men are in each unit" shouldn't have ANY impact on the efficacy of blast weapons.

The thing that SHOULD impact the efficacy of blast weapons is the number of MODELS near the target area - at least in a game like 40k where individual model position is very important and not abstracted. There is no interaction with UNITS whatsoever. Trying to force them to interact with units rather than models leads to incredibly clumsy situations that are illogical from both a design and realism perspective.

If I had to re-write the blast rules for 9th, I'd do something like this...

Blast weapons would be listed as Blast (X" / Y), where X" is the radius of the blast and Y is the blast value.

When shooting, do this:

(1) Nominate a target model and roll to hit ONCE.

(2) If the model is hit, the unit takes a number of total hits equal to the number of models within X" of the target model up to the Blast Value (e.g. Blast 6) of the weapon. These hits are then resolved like any other shooting attack and can be applied to whichever models a normal.

(3) If another nearby unit also has models within X" of the target model, that unit also takes a hit for each model within X", up to to the blast value of the weapon.

The blast value is there to put a cap on the lethality of blast weapons, and to give two levers for adjusting the balance.

I feel like all these blast suggestions ultimately just lead back to.
Bring back the blast templates.
If you want the target that is the center of the blast to have something done to it, change the blast rule to read

Blast( <size> , <direct hit modifer> ) where direct hit modifier is only applied if you roll a hit on the scatter die, or the scatter value -BS is zero, and that modifier can be + or x a given strength value

Like a target taht takes a direct hit from a LRBT battle canon might be Blast(5",+3) so the blast is what ever the normal profile is for the blast, but a direct hit is profile str+3

Yes, for sure

What we do in ProHammer is that you pick a model and use that as a basis for scattering and determining how many models are hit. But once the number of hits are determined, it feeds into the normal wound allocation / casualty removal process which mean that potentially any model in the unit is eligible to be allocated a wound, and it doesn't need to be tracked back to the actual blast template at that point.

That's the same way 4th handles it (and, iirc, every edition except barrage weapons in 7th)